The Case of the Vanished Lover
a Stealthboxxer Mystery



Chapter 3


I woke up to the grating sound of the lady next door yelling at her bum husband. He had lost his job at a nearby lumber mill about 3 months back and had been on the bottle ever since. She was getting tired of him just lying around and was telling him that if he didn’t find a job in the next week she was going back to her mother in Spokane. Her shrill voice caused my head to pound. What I get for drinking half a bottle of bourbon and sleeping on a worn out old couch.

I got up and changed into a cleaner shirt, gathered my coat, hat and gun and left the apartment intending to visit the harbormaster before going by the federal building and looking up my buddy at the FBI. I turned the corner in the hallway just in time to see my landlord knocking on the door of another poor slob in my building who was also behind on his rent. Seeing how the landlord had a scowl on his face I decided to go back to my end of the building and up to the roof and leave by the fire escape rather than deal with a landlord who was already on the attack. Maybe if this case went well I could pay up my back rent and put a down payment on my next months rent too. Just right now I had other plans and didn’t want to deal with him.

I made it to the street level and walked to my car. It had been parked behind a filling station one block over for the last two weeks since I didn’t have enough money for gas and oil. I had been using the public transit or the old gumshoe express to get around lately. My old car started up with some resistance and a cloud of blue smoke. I pulled around to the front of the station and filled up with gas and bought 2 cans of oil. One went into the crankcase, the other into the trunk for later.

Next I stopped at Stella's for coffee and a fried balogna and egg sandwich. I also got some bromo-seltzer for my pounding head. My headache and hunger pangs taken care of I got my late start on the day's investigations.

I made it down to the harbormasters office at around 2:30 pm. There were not many ships in port at this time and the pilot on duty was sitting at a desk reading a newspaper when I went in. I introduced myself showing my business card and asked if I could look at the port records for the last 2 months. The junior pilot seemed impressed with my credentials and assisted me in looking for any record of a ship named Escalate arriving or departing from the port. We found a record dated September 28 of the ship arriving in Olympia. The record showed that the ship was a dry cargo vessel registered in Brazil and owned by a company named Dravus Limited headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland. The captain's name was listed as Sam McCaw. The manifest showed they were carrying a load of mahogany furniture from the Philippines and die cut metal wind up toys from Hong Kong. The cargo had been transferred to rail and the ship was reloaded with mining equipment headed for Alaska. The record showed that the ship departed on October 3.

I asked the pilot if they would keep a record of what other visits this ship may have had over the last few years to the port. He said that the records are kept for only one year at their office and then forwarded to the maritime museum and library for archiving. I thanked him and left.

Not much here. Maybe try the maritime museum and see what I could find out about Dravus Limited and other visits the Escalate had made to Olympia.

The maritime library and museum was located at the top of the hill on the west side of the city and overlooked the bay. It was a newer sandstone building and had several flagpoles in front of it flying the flags of mostly Pacific nations. There was an old man wearing a weathered captains cap and rumpled clothes sitting on a bench outside when I arrived feeding the gulls with some scraps of dried bread from a paper bag. I tipped my hat to him and said, "Nice weather we're having" in sarcastic way. It had been drizzling for 2 weeks straight with the mercury hanging in the mid 40's with no end in sight.

He replied, "Finest kind." Strange.

I entered the museum and followed the directory sign downstairs to the library. There was a young woman sitting behind a desk in a light brown dress and dark brown knit sweater and wearing bifocals with a chain around her neck. Her hair was pulled up in the classic librarian bun. I walked up and cleared my throat. She was reading an old thick leather bound book. She peered over the bifocals. I said, "Hello Ma'am. My name is Enigma Stealthboxxer. I could use some assistance in some research I am doing. Can you direct me to the port records section where I might find record of a certain ship that has recently been in port here?"

"I'm sorry, sir. Records for ships coming in to port for the last 12 months are kept at the harbormasters office. You will have to go and inquire there." She immediately returned to her book.

"Actually, I just came from there. The pilot told me you keep records from years prior at this location. I have already gathered what information I could on the ship in question based on its last visit to Olympia. What I am looking for is information on prior visits to this port as well as information on the company that owns the ship and its captain."

"Oh, I am sorry. We don’t get many people looking for the back records. I assumed you were an insurance adjuster looking for cargo information for a loss claim. Let me help you." She got up and escorted me to a bookcase on the far north end of the library. "All the port records are kept in this section. There is a separate card catalog for the port in this case that is different than the main library catalog. You should be able to find what you are looking for here. If there is anything else I can assist you with let me know."

I thanked her and she returned to her desk. I looked over the card catalog and opened the drawer for E and began looking for Escalate. I was a bit surprised when I found two cards for the same ship. One showed the most recent visit to Olympia as December two years prior as well as 4 other visits in the last ten years. The other card was quite surprising. It showed the first visit to the port in 1847 and the last visit in 1894. There were over 30 entries on the card showing visits to Olympia in that time. Seems that ship was quite a regular visitor to the South Sound in the last century.

Upon further inspection I noticed something quite odd. The owner of the original Escalate and the owner of the modern Escalate were both Dravus Limited of Glasgow, Scotland. Even more surprising was the fact that the captain listed for every record on both cards was Sam McCaw. I made some notes in a small notebook I kept tucked in my overcoat and replaced the cards.

I then pulled the records for the three most frequent visits of the Escalate from the bookcases and laid out the records on a table to try to find any more information I could about any cargoes or destinations that might show a pattern. All the records from the last three visits showed the typical cargoes of consumer goods from the orient coming in and industrial equipment and general supplies going out to Alaska. However what was not typical was that each record of cargo going out showed at least one piece of mining equipment being shipped to Anchorage by a company called Geraldson Corporation based in Denver, Colorado. A pattern. What did it mean? The only thing certain was that the Escalate was getting what seemed to be pretty regular business from the Geraldson Corporation.

The shipping records in this section went back to 1905. I wanted to see if the library had any records for the earlier Escalate just on a whim. I walked back to the desk and the librarian put down her book again.

"Well, Mr. Stealthboxxer, did you find everything you were looking for?"

"I did find some of what I am looking for. Perhaps you can help me further. Does this library contain port records from the late 1800's?"

"Yes, we do have another room of archives going back to the mid 1800's. The only people who ever look in there are historians though. I can’t imagine your insurance company could be interested in shipping in the last century."

"Actually, I'm not really an insurance adjuster, ma'am. I'm really a private investigator and I am working on a missing person’s case."

She looked me up and down a good one at hearing that. "Your missing person must be pretty old for you to be looking at shipping records from the 1800's, Mr. Stealthboxxer."

"To be quite frank I don’t even know who it is I am looking for really. I just have some scant information about a ship and I have run into a conundrum of sorts here. Seems the ship I am looking into has or had a sister ghost ship from the past with the same name. I don’t know if that means anything or not but as long as I am here I think I should at least look into it for my client's sake."

"All right. I don’t mean to pry. Follow me and I will show you the archives." She led me down a hallway behind the counter to a small dark room with no windows that had a dank musty smell. It was filled to the ceiling with rows and rows of bookcases. The area where the shipping records were housed were labeled according to year and we soon found the records for the early to mid 1890's back to the 1840's. This section comprised most of one bookcase. She left me alone to investigate on my own and soon I had pulled shipping records for all the shipments on the Escalate in its first 2 years and last 3 years of shipping in and out of Olympia.

I noticed the pattern right away. Each shipment out of Olympia contained at least one piece of freight from an R.J.Geraldson Company headed to Alaska. Could this be the same Geraldson that was currently shipping mining equipment to Alaska? It was too coincidental to be a fluke. I made some notes and then put the files away and walked back to the desk again.

"I appreciate your help miss. I was wondering if you could help me with one more thing. I would like to know if the library would have a record of companies that have done business through the port throughout the years."

"The library has many books that document the shipping companies and ships that frequent the port. There is also a catalog of companies who ship through our port as well. If you can give me the names I can do the search for you."

"Alright. I'd like to have information on the Dravus Limited company of Glasgow, Scotland. It is the owner of a ship named Escalate which I have found to have visited the port several times over the last 10 years. I would also like to see what you may have on the Geraldson Corporation of Denver, Colorado. This company has shipped several shipments of mining equipment aboard the Escalate in the last 10 years."

"OK, I will see what we have. I am sure I can do this much faster by myself. If you would like you can have a seat while I pull the records for you. It should only take a few minutes. There is a coffeepot in the staff room there behind that door. Feel free to have a cup."

"Thanks." I got myself a cup of Joe and sat at the desk and thumbed through a copy of Life magazine while I waited. The librarian returned in a few minutes with 4 books.

"You know, I found quite a lot of information on both of those companies you were interested in, Mr. Letterboxxer. It looks like both of those companies are quite old and have been doing business together through our port for over 90 years."

"That’s what my research into the harbormaster records indicated. Can you show me any information on the owners of the companies and any links that they may have as far as board members."

"Funny you should ask that. It seams that the original owner of the Geraldson company, Mr. Randolph Johnson Geraldson was a board member of Dravus Limited. It says here that Mr. Geraldson was from Wales and immigrated to the U.S. in the mid 1830's. He ended up in the Denver area and started several mines, silver and copper for the most part. In 1845 he financed a mining expedition to California and his company eventually opened one of the richest gold mines in the territory. Later in the 1890's when gold was discovered in Alaska his company was one of the largest mining companies in that territory as well."

"My own research showed that the old Escalate was carrying mining equipment to Alaska from the Olympia port as early as 1847. If this is correct, it would seem that our mysterious Mr. Geraldson was ahead of both of the largest gold rushes in our nation's history. That would make Mr. Geraldson a very important and powerful man."

"It would seem so. Later records show that Geraldson's son, grandson and great-grandson eventually ended up as head of the company after R.J. passed on." She turned to another page in the book and pointed out a list of company officers, "Interestingly too, each Geraldson also served on the board of directors for Dravus Limited in his time. Currently the head of the Geraldson Corporation is Robert Johnson Geraldson, great grandson of Randolph Johnson Geraldson."

"That’s quite a dynasty the Geraldsons have. I wonder why I have never heard of them until today."

"I don’t know. I would think that a company that big and a family that rich would have been world famous."

"Do the books show any other companies that Geraldson owns?"

"Yes. This shows that Geraldson owns a whole gamut of different companies all over the globe. Most are in the mining business in some way but others are listed as being involved in oil exploration, newspaper publishing, logging, the rubber trade, and munitions."

"Are any of these companies located in this area?"

"As a matter of fact, there was a logging company named the McCaw Logging Company that was owned by Geraldson listed as being opened in 1895 and headquartered in the town of Bordeaux which is about 15 miles south of Tumwater. It shows that they had an office in Olympia too. However, the record shows that the company closed back in 1927. There is also a record of another company that was based in Portland, Oregon that Geraldson owned. It was a land development and construction company called the DeAmour Company. It shows that the company was opened in 1840 by Peter DeAmour and was purchased by Geraldson in 1850. That company also closed in 1927."

"The name of McCaw keeps coming up in my investigation. What information do you have on company officers for the McCaw Logging Company?"

"The book lists the President of the company as one Sam McCaw."

"As I suspected. Too bad the McCaw Company closed in '27. I wouldn't mind paying them a visit and asking some questions."

"Well, you may not be too late. I show that the office that they operated has the same address as the current Geraldson Corporation's regional office."

"Why didn’t you tell me Geraldson had an office in Olympia?"

"You didn’t ask."

I took down the address of the current Geraldson office and made some notes on the names of the companies and their officers and their dates of operations. I asked Laurel, that's the librarian's name, to copy all the information she could find for me and left her ten dollars for her trouble and told her I would be back on Monday to pick it up.

I had uncovered some mysteries but it seemed I was at least getting somewhere. The problem was, I just didn’t know what it had to do with the case.



To be continued . . .







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